


on the nature of daylight

by alaudarum



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Based on Dimitri and Felix's Azure Moon paired ending, Dimitri IS already dead in this sorry friends, Future Fic, Minor Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Minor Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Post-Canon, Unrequited Love, or is it????????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22659403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alaudarum/pseuds/alaudarum
Summary: “El,” he begins.  “There are some things that aren’t proper for you to do because you’ll be Queen Regnant someday.  There will be some things that you’llhaveto do, like respecting noble titles.”There will be things that are expected of her, just as there were things expected of Dimitri.  There were things that were expected of him, to throw his entire self into mending a fractured Fodlan, and when the pieces were sufficiently stitched back together, to take a lady’s hand in marriage and ensure there would be an heir to the throne.There were things expected of Felix as well, and if there was one thing that all Faerghans understood, it was that one’s individual happiness must yield to the collective good of the nation.  He’d never liked it, the concept of the self becoming lost in a sea of the many.And yet, here he stood, before the manifestation of all of their loyalties and duties.--Dimitri and the Queen of Faerghus have passed, leaving behind their daughter.  Felix takes it upon himself to raise her, and tells himself he made that decision out of duty, not out of love.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 7
Kudos: 56





	on the nature of daylight

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by [magtuired](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magtuired), who is also responsible for implanting the idea deep into my brain 🔪
> 
> Title taken from the the song I had on loop while writing this, aka On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter.

It’s been five years since King Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd passed.

It’s been six years since the late queen passed from a broken heart.

It’s been eight years since Princess Elisabeth Dedue Blaiddyd was born.

Felix fills the hole in his chest with his unending list of duties. Although most of the heavy lifting in Fodlan’s reconstruction is complete, there are always schools that could use a renovation or two, another hospital that could be built, one more adjustment to the nation’s tax reform that could be made to increase its equitability.

Those tasks keep the ache in his chest at bay; it ebbs and flows, but today, it lingers like a low-hanging fog that throws all his thoughts into a thick haze. On days like today, he cannot help but think of what paltry memories he has of his mother, the ones of Glenn that are clearer but fading with time, of his father, of _Dimitri_ \--

On days like today, he cannot tell whether the girl standing before him makes things better or worse.

“Uncle Felix?”

The small voice shakes Felix out of his daze. He remembers, now, that this is one of Castle Fhirdiad’s great halls, and he was gazing upon a portrait of the late king. He glances down at the child at his side. Her blond hair is pulled back into a single braid (Ingrid’s handiwork, he assumes, for this week is her bi-monthly visit to Fhirdiad with Sylvain), and her blue eyes are the spitting image of the man in the portrait before him.

He releases a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding before addressing her. “ _Duke_ Felix,” he corrects her, for even Dimitri, who’d always insisted that those close with him should address him casually, referred to Felix’s late father by his full title.

The girl frowns, troubled by Felix’s response. “But you _said_ I could call you Uncle Felix outside of your work meetings!” And then she adds, after a thoughtful pause, “‘Duke Felix’ is weird… Shouldn’t it be ‘Duke Fraldarius’ instead? I don’t like those though. You’ve always been ‘Uncle Felix’ to me!”

She’s incorrigible, Felix thinks, but he has no one to blame other than himself, especially when he’d willingly taken up the task of raising the orphaned princess. As the head of House Fraldarius, the duty first fell to him, and then to House Gautier. While he was certain Sylvain and Ingrid would appropriately equip Elisabeth with both parental nurture and the foundation to become the next ruler of a united Fodlan, his father’s words had echoed in his head that day.

_Felix, you will understand, someday, when you are older._

He hadn’t _wanted_ to understand. He had sworn to be _better_ than Rodrigue, to ensure his own hypothetical children understood that they were valued for who they were, and not for the eventual role they would play in the great machine of Faerghus. But that wasn’t why he’d been angry that day. To _truly_ understand Rodrigue’s words meant becoming a father figure to an orphaned Blaiddyd child.

To understand his father meant never understanding one’s own children.

But to understand his father also meant to live in a world without Dimitri.

“El -- ” Felix warns, but today, the syllable catches on his throat. The nickname barely makes it past his lips, for he’d never noticed that he’d begun to use that nickname simply because bits and pieces of Dimitri’s vocabulary had wormed its way into his head, including the late king’s nickname for his daughter. “El,” he says again, suppressing the memories of a girl in red with golden regalia adorning her pale hair, “You’re right. I did say you could call me ‘Uncle Felix,’ but that’s only _outside_ of official business. You remember that, right?”

El nods. “I remember,” she pipes up. “I call you ‘Duke Fraldarius’ and _you_ have to call me Elisabeth. … But why can’t we be ‘El’ and ‘Uncle Felix’ in that too?”

Felix wonders if he asked his father this many questions too when he was eight years old.

He pauses to try and conjure a response.

“El,” he begins. “There are some things that aren’t proper for you to do because you’ll be Queen Regnant someday. There will be some things that you’ll _have_ to do, like respecting noble titles.”

There will be things that are expected of her, just as there were things expected of Dimitri. There were things that were expected of him, to throw his entire self into mending a fractured Fodlan, and when the pieces were sufficiently stitched back together, to take a lady’s hand in marriage and ensure there would be an heir to the throne.

There were things expected of Felix as well, and if there was one thing that all Faerghans understood, it was that one’s individual happiness must yield to the collective good of the nation. He’d never liked it, the concept of the self becoming lost in a sea of the many.

And yet, here he stood, before the manifestation of all of their loyalties and duties.

“I don’t get it,” El admits, “but I’ll believe you, Uncle Felix. If you’re in a meeting with people like Uncle Sylvain and Aunt Ingrid, Uncle Dedue, Uncle Ashe, Aunt Mercedes, and Aunt Annette, I’ll call you ‘Duke Fraldarius.’”

Felix knows a partial victory and a losing battle when he sees one. So instead of noting that she should address them _all_ by their titles, he simply ends that conversation with, “Good.” His gaze, however, does not return to the portrait adorning the wall. Instead, it remains fixed on his charge standing before him. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other before -- there it is -- folding her hands behind her back, a gesture Felix has learned means El is about to request something from him.

El lowers her eyes to the floor. Felix wonders if that hesitantly guilty look ran in the Blaiddyd family.

“Well?” Felix asks with a raised brow. “Don’t tell me you came here to look at a dusty picture of your old man.”

El shakes her head in earnest, braid bouncing off her shoulders. It speaks to Ingrid’s quality of handiwork, that no strands of hair come loose from the braid. “No, I -- um. I thought… can you -- can you -- your sword forms! Can I see them again? Please, Uncle Felix?”

Felix raises a brow. “My sword forms…? I showed you yesterday though, didn’t I?”

“But I want to see them again! Please, Uncle Felix? Will you teach me some too?”

Felix knows that when El speaks with a preconceived notion, she speaks with a confidence that belies her young age. Her earlier stumbling of words meant she’d made an impromptu request of him, one that she’d suddenly made up on the spot.

She hadn’t sought him out for training after all.

 _“You know, Felix, you’d be surprised by the things children sense about the people around them,”_ was something a man with blond hair and blue eyes once told him.

He’s being pitied by an eight-year-old. How pathetic.

Because Felix has mellowed with age, he places a hand on El’s shoulder. But because he is raising the future of Fodlan, he has to ask in a deathly serious tone, “Did you finish those word problems I assigned you yesterday?”

El nods.

“ _All_ of them?”

El nods again.

Satisfied, he crosses his arms over his chest. “Good. I’ll see you in the training hall. Prepare yourself with your training equipment. I’ll be right there.”

El’s expression brightens as she offers Felix a third nod, then speeds off to prepare for some training. El appeared to have better control over her own Minor Crest of Blaiddyd, but the extra training, even at this age, was necessary to facilitate harnessing its power properly.

Silently, Felix watches Dimitri’s daughter disappear down the corridor. Now that El is gone again, he finds his attention wandering back to the portrait of his heart hanging upon the wall.

_Felix, you will understand, someday, when you are older._

Although the corner of his mouth quirks up into a small smile, he offers Dimitri’s painting one final look with somber eyes. Adorned with the epithet “Savior King” at the very bottom and painted with his head held high, a wild-maned lion at his heel, it was clear the artist intended on channeling the late king as the paramount of nobility. Poems would be written about the King of Lions, how despite his rank as ruler of a united Fodlan, his magnanimous heart caused him to seek out the downtrodden and reassure them that they would always have a place to rest their weary heads.

And in between all those tales, one ballad may surface about how, after King Dimitri’s death, Duke Fraldarius wept and wailed harder than the queen.

Perhaps duty was not the _only_ reason why Rodrigue had so readily taken up the responsibility of raising Dimitri, and, perhaps, duty was not the sole reason why Felix had so readily taken El as his charge.

“You were right, Father,” he muses before turning from Dimitri’s portrait to prepare for stepping yet again into Rodrigue’s shoes.

“I suppose, now that I’m older, I do understand after all.”

**Author's Note:**

> [magtuired](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magtuired): Felix raising Dimitri's child after he dies tho  
> Me:  
> Me: on god I'm about to do it
> 
> Appreciate any kudos or comments o7 I left the queen's name unspecified on purpose, feel free to use your imagination....... I considered writing in Dimitri's wife and spending more thought on who she'd be, but then I figured if I'm going with the Rodrigue parallels then may as well go all the way 😔
> 
> Find me at [dualcaster](https://twitter.com/dualcaster) on twitter!


End file.
